He was so close to his goal, and yet, at any moment, the prize could be snatched away from him.
And for the first time since his father had been killed, he prayed, not only to the Altan gods, but to any god that would listen, that she not be discovered and taken from him—or that, if she was discovered, at least let it be that she escaped into the free skies—
Even if he could not.
And perhaps the gods, aloof in the Land Beyond the Horizon, actually listened to him.
Because the moment of discovery—and the moment of first flight—both came at the same moment, and it was when he was with her.
He was, in fact, sitting on her back—in a purloined saddle. That saddle was one of the small ones in the compound, made precisely for dragonets, and one that he had been eying for days, waiting for the dragonet who was using it to outgrow it. He had his legs braced in the harness, his hand locked into the hand brace at the top of the saddle, the guide straps, which she had learned to obey beautifully, tied to the brace, while she made little bounds up and down the sands of her pen, flapping her wings enthusiastically the whole time. He had come to enjoy these wild rides, even though he'd been terrified at first, for unlike the dragonets that he had ridden for Baken, she was not tethered. He remembered, all too well, his very first ride a-dragonback, face-down over the front of Ari's saddle. He'd sworn then that he would never, ever ride on a dragon again, but that had been before Avatre. Now —well, he was guiding the dragon, the exhilaration had overcome the terror and now he was able to join in the sense of fun she had in these exercises.
He thought that she was building up to that burst that would take her truly up into the air, but he wasn't actually expecting anything other than her first hover. She was right in the middle of her pen, about to make a really big bound; he thought that this might be the moment when she really went airborne with him, rather than just jumping about with wing-assistance, and he was braced for it—
When a wild shout from the doorway of the pen startled them both.
'Hoi!' shouted one of the older dragon boys, staring at them. He knew Vetch, he knew very well that Vetch wasn't assigned to a dragonet, and he knew that Vetch should not have been sitting in the saddle on an untethered dragonet's back. He didn't know what Vetch was up to, but one thing he did know. It wasn't what Vetch was supposed to be doing.
'Haraket!' he shouted. 'Haraket! Come quick!'
Vetch didn't even think what to do; he just reacted, by punching Avatre in the shoulders with his heels. She, already startled and alarmed by the shout, and even more so by a strange human in her pen, a thing she had never seen before, also just reacted—by leaping, not jumping; leaping for the sky, eyes focused up, neck outstretched, and wings working purposefully. She was frightened now, truly frightened, and she wanted away before any more people shouted at her and jammed their heels into her! One wing flap. Two.
She was off the ground, with him still on her back. Not a hover, this; no, it was the first wing beats of real flight.
'Dragonets are often startled into their first flights,' he heard Ari's voice in memory. 'They get very nervy about the time they're about to take that big leap. Maybe it's the gods' way of making sure they get off the ground that first time, because if nothing startled them into flying, they'd be too afraid to try. …'
She was making good, strong wing beats now, not flaps. And she wasn't just fleeing, she was climbing, with determination. She wasn't afraid to fly, not Avatre! She surged upward in that way he recalled from riding Kashet, a jerky, lunging motion, throwing him back each time she made another wing beat, until he bent over the saddle, crouching, to get himself in balance with what she was doing. He was just the rider now; Avatre was the one in control. All he could do was to hold on and try not to hamper her.
She was above the walls. Then higher than the walls—
There was more shouting down below; he clutched at the harness in sudden fear—
He heard Haraket's voice; he heard the voices of other men, loud, excited, angry, down below and behind him; he looked back and saw a crowd of men in Avatre's pen, Haraket at their center, gesturing and shouting—but not at him.
That sent a chill down his back.
They weren't calling his name.
Instead of ordering him back, demanding he return then and there, as they would have been if they thought this flight was purely accidental, they were shouting at each other, issuing confusing and probably contradictory orders. But none of those orders was shouted at him.
That was when he knew he was in deep trouble.
They knew what this was about; they knew—knew he'd 'stolen' a dragonet, though they didn't yet know it wasn't one of the new ones. They knew that this wasn't just the result of a wager or a boyish prank.
